Design of Hydrocyclone With Axial Inlet and its Performance Used in Wellbore

With the increasing of the water ratio in produced fluid year by year, the cost of oil extraction will turn high gradually wherever in onshore oilfields or offshore oilfields. Downhole Oil/Water Separating System (DOWS) with hydrocyclone as the downhole separator is the key technology to separate most water from the produced fluid and reinject it into the suitable formation. This system can significantly reduce the oilfield produced water which is the universal puzzle all around the world. While how to decrease the diameter of the separator is a bottleneck problem to expand the flexibility of DOWS. There is a disk type inlet used for the conventional hydrocyclone which can bring fluid into the main body of hydrocyclone with the speed of rotation. The size of the disk type inlet will be bigger than the main body. And this is the main bottleneck for the miniaturization of hydrocyclone. So two new kinds of axial flow inlets were designed for the downhole separator in this paper. Helical structure was used as the unit of running fluid into hydrocyclone with the speed of rotation. It can make the diameter of the inlet and the main body of hydrocyclone to be equal. In the same time, it will simplify the arrangement of the flow path. The design, structure parameter optimization, the influence of separating efficiency of this inlet is discussed in this paper. And they show sharp separating capability as the downhole separators.Copyright © 2014 by ASME